TOKYO Reuters - China's rivals welcomed on Friday the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, while some of Beijing's allies questioned what they called the politicisation of the annual award.

Nevertheless, a joint statement from the EWP and Naipaul's literary agency, The Wylie Agency, said the 78-year-old had withdrawn from the event "by mutual agreement" yesterday, after the "politicisation" of the conference in the Turkish media had "altered the original conception of the event and Sir VS Naipaul's contribution to it as a celebrated author".

This was denounced by Ed Balls, the shadow home secretary, as the "politicisation" of British policing - but in essence, it would represent a return to the tradition that once made our police forces the envy of the world.

Earlier on Thursday, Russia's ambassador to rights body the Council of Europe denounced what he called the "politicisation" of the court, which has repeatedly ruled against Russia for rights abuses in Chechnya, Russian prisons and elsewhere.

Some have spoken of the 'politicisation' of Defence, exemplified by Admiral Chris Barrie's pathetic press conference when he finally admitted that he knew what everyone in Defence had known for months about the 'children overboard'.

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Spiked: 'Many countries in the European Union have instituted laws against Holocaust denial. Sanctifying the Holocaust in this way has allowed European officialdom to claim moral authority on matters of good and evil, right and wrong, in relation to the present and the past.

'Regrettably, the elevation of the Holocaust in this way does little to help people make sense of that terrible event. Instead, many Europeans experience the politicisation of the Holocaust as a bureaucratic project, something that is distant from their lives.'